Monday, October 31, 2011

Book review: Reggie Dabbs with John Driver- Reggie

In Reggie, Reggie Dabbs tells of how with God’s help he overcame his broken background to become someone impacting young people around the world.

His story is certainly a profoundly inspiring one. The difference between the situation he was born into and where his is now is astonishing. I had heard bits and pieces of his story in his preaching before but enjoyed reading it in more detail. I could see this book being very encouraging to young people wondering if it is possible to find their way out of the struggles they find themselves in.

Reggie writes with a quite conversational style. The style didn’t overly appeal to me, however I could see how it might appeal to younger readers who are more within his target audience. At times some of the writing felt a bit too dramatic or too strongly designed to promote an emotional response. This particularly stood out to me in the first few pages of chapter one.

I was curious to see how well the gospel was explained in this book as he had not done this particularly well in some sermons I had heard from him previously. It takes until a fair way into the book for him to get to much substantial biblical content. Once he does, his success at dealing with it is mixed. The gospel is not at all well explained before readers are provided with a suggested prayer to commit themselves to Jesus on page 77. In the last few pages of the book the gospel is explained with greater clarity.

His use of other biblical texts tended to suffer from a bit too much paraphrasing. It doesn’t help that he sometimes doesn’t make it clear where he is paraphrasing from, making it harder to look up the stories he was talking about. I was also uncertain of his application of some texts. This was particularly the case with his use of Hosea as being a metaphor for individuals running away from God. I was of the understanding that Hosea was about God’s people as a group rejecting him.

While his story is inspiring and worth reading, I would be someone hesitant to recommend the book due to the issues with how the bible is used in it.